During the Syrian civil war, the district of Yarmouk, home to thousands of Palestinians, became the scene of dramatic and ferocious fighting. The film follows the destiny of civilians during the brutal sieges, imposed by the Syrian regime, that took place in the wake of the battles. With his camera, Abdallah Al-Khatib composes a love song to a place that proudly resists the atrocities of war.
13-year-old Khodor is a child whose family tries to issue him an ID document that proves his existence and gives him the right to education, health-care and movement outside of the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut, Lebanon. Through the process, many of the family's old secrets are revealed.
A Guatemalan woman, Ana Lucía Cuevas, returns home from exile to face the brutal history of Guatemala's armed conflict. In 1984, her brother Carlos was kidnapped by the state as one of thousands who were abducted and disappeared. Recounting the stories of brutal genocide, terror, state repression and violence, this film documents the memories of those victimised by the Guatemalan state.
What drives a young, well-educated Westerner to volunteer as a “peace activist” in the Middle East? Caiomhe Butterly is one of a growing number of volunteers who risk their own safety to intervene in the long-running and bloody conflict between Israel and Palestine. Several internationals, including her, have now been injured. Some have died. In this film, she describes witnessing the aftermath of the attack on Jenin in April 2002. The film follows her work, the main emphasis being “the accompaniment of communities at risk”. Despite being threatened, shot in the leg and deported later that year, she is determined to go back.
I ragazzi di Hebron
While the world’s attention has been fixed on the war in Iraq, Dispatches reporter Sandra Jordan and producer Rodrigo Vasquez risk their lives to reveal the shocking level of daily violence and murderous hate in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli filmmaker Shai Corneli Polak records the building of the 'security wall' through Palestinian territory at the village of Bil'in. The villagers protest mostly peacefully, while the Israeli army doesn't react peacefully. By now the Israeli High Court has ruled that the building of the wall was illegal.
The World Parade: Palestine
Existir es resistir
A feature-length documentary film by Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi. After 43 horrific days working round the clock under constant bombardment in the emergency rooms of Gaza’s Al Shifa and Al Ahli hospitals, British-Palestinian reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, emerged to find himself as a face of Palestinian resistance. With news footage of him pale and shell-shocked reverberating around the world, he spoke of a catalogue of horrors from lacerated bodies, to amputations without anesthetics, orphaned children with no surviving family, and the deliberate targeting of medics and hospital facilities.
Seven militant women (fedaiyat) of the revolutionary generation tell the story of the Palestinian resistance through accounts of their own lives. Cut from 35 hours of interviews with leaders of the armed struggle, the film presents an image of confident, unapologetic and proud feminine identity. Together, the memories of these women narrate the dream of a generation, yet unrealized.
After two intifadas and the construction of the Israeli wall, the only Palestinian zoo is still there and is now seeking for international recognition and to replace their lost giraffes.
An Indonesian man with a communist background named Ramli was brutally murdered when the "Communist" purge occurred in 1965. His remaining family members lived in fear and silence until the making of this documentary. Adi, a brother of his, decided to revisit the horrific incident and visited the men who were responsible for the killings and one survivor of the purge. These meetings uncovered sadistic details of the murders and exposed raw emotions and reactions of the killers' family members about what happened in the past - much to Adi's disappointment.
A meeting between two strangers sparks the desire to understand each other through the medium of cinema. They both simultaneously start recording their surroundings on camera and crafting the resulting footage. They, Elettra from Italy and Hazem from Gaza, become the subjects of this film that documents their first moments together. It depicts a multi-faceted reality in which North and South confront each other in a discussion on rights and inequalities, a reality in which we witness a migration towards one another, while capturing an intimate way of making a film together.
Rafah is located in the southern Gaza Strip. It’s a city cut in two by the Philadelphia Road, a security corridor between Sinai and Gaza. It’s destiny changed during the night of 12 September 2005, when the Israeli army withdrew from the Gaza Strip. The Israelis evacuated the Philadelphia Road and the colonies surrounding the city disappeared. But Rafah would never emerge from its chaos. Rafah is the hub of arms trafficking between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Since the Israeli withdrawal, these arms have contributed to the bloody wars between families. After the Hamas victory at the legislative elections, the city sank into a major economic crisis. On 25 June, 2006, Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit was abducted by Palestinian militants using a tunnel dug from Rafah. In reprisal, Tsahal shelled the houses of arms dealers located along the Philadelphia Road. By 12 September, 2006, a year after the withdrawal, all hopes of rebirth had died.
BLESSED BLESSED OBLIVION weaves together a portrait of masculine performativity in East Jerusalem, as manifested in gyms, body shops and hair dressing parlors.
A verité legal drama about Judge Kholoud Al-Faqih, the first woman appointed to a Shari'a court in the Middle East, whose career provides rare insights into both Islamic law and gendered justice.
The film examines a personal attempt to address existential concepts related to Palestinians such as exile, return and the image of the homeland.
Winner of the Jury’s Special Mention at the 18th Al Ard Film Festival in Sardinia, Bank of Targets documents Israel’s targeting of civilian infrastructure in Gaza in 2021. Through a first-hand account of the bombing of a residential building, Sarraj highlights the efforts of journalists to create a record of war crimes as they unfold. Sarraj was killed in his home by an Israeli air strike on 22 October, 2023.
When the running team of Viva Salud, a Belgian NGO fighting for the right to health, went to Bethlehem to participate in the Palestine Marathon, they didn’t yet know that they would do much more than just running. From Ramallah to Hebron, from Nablus to Bethlehem, their encounters with Viva Salud’s local partners helped them gain a better understanding of the situation in the region and discover the daily reality of the Israeli occupation. While getting to know resistance in all its forms, along with the beauty of Palestine, they tried to capture this in a documentary vlog of their journey—a cocktail of rebellion, solidarity, and collective resistance.